I made two bags (one butter, one plain), popped open three Pepsis, and put a couple of ham-and-cheese sandwiches on the tray, as well. (I didn’t remember seeing them at any of the tables during dinner.) I even found a can of dog food, which I put in a bowl for Lump, who seemed to have a higher opinion of me after I set it in front of him.
Everyone thanked me, then snuggled together under a blanket on the couch, watching Charlie Brown and munching away.
“Ahem?”
I turned to see the Reverend standing right behind me. He looked at Beth and her children, then at Lump, then at me, raising his left eyebrow like that actor who used to play Mr. Spock on Star Trek.
“I know, I know,” I said, moving past him toward the rear doors. “What was I supposed to do, ignore them?”
He fell into step beside me. “No, you were supposed to do exactly what you did. It just seemed to me that you were basking in the moment a little too long…you knight in shining overalls, you.”
“They weren’t here for dinner, were they?”
“They were, but they were sleeping and I wasn’t about to wake them. You did good, Sam.”
“Your praise is everything to me.”
The Reverend grinned. “Could you maybe be a little less sincere?”
“I could give it a whirl, but it costs extra.” We smiled at each other, then the Reverend moved toward the kitchen to stock up on hot coffee and sandwiches while I made my way out back to get the van started for Popsicle Patrol.
As I was closing the door behind me, I took one last look inside; Timmy was sitting down in one of the chairs in the lounge, Lump’s face seemed permanently fused to the bowl, Beth and her kids were munching happily away (on both the popcorn and the sandwiches, which they shared with Timmy), and the other guests were either settling into their cots, playing cards, or chatting quietly. Sheriff Jackson was sitting at Ethel’s table, reading a paperback novel. Everything was quiet, warm, pleasant enough, and safe. It made me feel good, knowing that I’d helped make this a good, clean, decent place for folks who weren’t as fortunate as me. I wanted to freeze this moment in my mind so I could take it out again sometime and look at it when I was feeling blue.
They were all fine; they were all safe.
I try very hard to remember that now; how safe it all seemed.
3
It wasn’t just the freezing rain that kept my mood more on the downside that night; I’d felt like something was…off all day. Ever since I’d arrived at the shelter—well before four that afternoon—it seemed like the whole world was moving at a slow, liquid crawl. People looked out their windows at the dark skies as if they sensed there might be something looking back down at them but taking care to keep itself hidden from their gazes.
I guess that sounds a little on the melodramatic side, and I’m sorry I can’t make it any clearer than that, but there was just this feeling in the atmosphere. The closest thing I can think of to compare it to is the day the World Trade Center buildings went down. Remember how, when you went outside, even if there were no radios or television sets to be heard, even if you were alone, you could feel the weight of it in the air? As if the wind itself had been stopped dead in its tracks, stunned by the horror of it, and everything around you was holding its breath, wondering, What happens now?
That’s what this day had felt like to me.
Like I’d told Ethel, I hadn’t been sleeping too well the past few days, and I figured that had a lot to do with the way I was seeing things. It wasn’t like some slimy, big-ass tentacled monster was going to come dropping down on Cedar Hill like a curse from Heaven once the clouds parted and the rain stopped. I was just tired. That had to be it.
Once the van’s engine was all warmed up, I turned the heater on and in a few minutes had the inside all toasty. I pulled around in front and waited for the Reverend, who came out almost right away, carrying a cooler that I knew was full of sandwiches, as well as three Thermoses; two of hot coffee, one of hot chocolate. He slid open the side door, shoved the cooler inside, then closed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat.
“Me, too,” he said.
“What?”
He shook off the rain, ran his hand through his hair to push it back from his face, then looked right at me. “I’ve been feeling it, too.”
I blinked. “Feeling…wh-what? What’re you—?”
He shook his head. “Don’t play dumb with me, Sam. All day you’ve felt like something’s been off, haven’t you? Like something’s about to happen?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Yes.”
“Hence my saying, ‘Me, too.’ Try to keep up.” He leaned forward and looked out the windshield, his eyes turning up toward the rain. “Makes you crazy, doesn’t it? That sense that something’s going to happen and you don’t know if it’ll be something good or something…not.” “Either way,” I said, putting the van into gear, “we got the perfect night for it.” The Reverend turned to me and smiled. “That’s just like you, Sam. ‘The perfect night.’ Saying something like that.” “Oh, it’ll be all right, Mr. Frodo, you’ll see.” I pulled away from the curb and the Popsicle Patrol officially began.
Believe it or not it was the Reverend, not me, who started calling it that. It strikes some people as offensive—Ethel, in particular, thinks it’s pretty tasteless—but the Reverend defends it by saying: “Would it be in better taste if I called it the ‘Corpse-sicle Patrol’? Because that’s what they’ll be if we don’t get to them in time. If you wish for us to change the name, then you have to make at least two runs with us. Otherwise you get no say.”
Ethel declined the offer and never complained about it again after that.
There are five pickup points on Popsicle Patrol, and on nights like this, when the rain and the wind and the cold conspire to freeze you in place, the homeless folks all know where these pickup points are and know which routes to take in order to get there; that way, if we pass each other while they or us are heading in that direction, we just stop and pick them up. Cedar Hill isn’t that big of a place when compared with a city like Columbus or Cincinnati, but it still takes a while to drive through it on bad weather nights. The Reverend established the pickup points about five years ago, when he first showed up in Cedar Hill, and since then not one homeless person has frozen to death here in winter—or any other time of the year. Let’s see Columbus or Cincinnati try and claim that.
The first pickup point is on the downtown square at the east side of the courthouse. Like all pickup points, we pull up and wait fifteen minutes, then drive on to the next if no one shows. As soon as we have a full van, we go back to the shelter, drop them off, then head to the next pickup point, and so on. The Reverend took a lot of time figuring out the route, making sure that the trips to and from each pickup point takes us past the previous ones again in case anyone new has shown up in the meantime. All in all, we pass each pickup point a minimum of five times during Popsicle Patrol, which is why it usually takes us a couple of hours.
We pulled up the courthouse and I automatically killed the headlights.
“Sam,” said the Reverend.
“Sorry, force of habit.” I keep forgetting that the out-of-towners are wary of approaching a dark van. I turned the headlights back on just in time to see a man with no legs rolling himself toward us on a makeshift cart built from two skateboards and a wooden crate, using two canes to propel himself forward.